Biomythography

Birthstone, astrological sign, blood type: 

 

I was born in Oakland, California in 1981 to 

a black American father & Chinese immigrant mother.

 

My father’s people         migrated out of Louisiana 

before the Second World War.

 

My mother,                         

born in Burma & sent away at nine to HK & Taiwan, 

香港、台湾

arriving to the States at 17 in 1974. 

 

_____

 

The bequeathing:

 

I would inherit so much and so little 

from my parents: 

 

my love of stories & music, 

my genetic makeup & health disorders, 

my refusal to learn how to cook, 

because the last thing I needed 

was a man who expected me to 

serve him, 

我不需要一个对我有期望的男人

为他服务，

a troubled relationship with money that 

began with high interest rates & ended 

in overdraft fees, 

an ugly clogged drain feeling that 

should have been hair & sludge 

but turned out to be decades of 

internalized shame. 

 

I would begin to inventory the nonfinancial 

gains my parents gifted me over the years: 

 

my taste in food, 

the resilience of my body, 

our family history of abuse and trauma, 

our expectations and disappointment, 

& an early life steeped in color blindness 

that left me unprepared to confront ongoing 

state-sanctioned violence, social death 社会性死亡, 

& social debt 社会债务.

 

_____

 

Those are my biological _____:

这些是我的生物_____:

 

To be fair, 

and to acknowledge my mother’s words—

“You need to stop blaming us and 

focus on yourself”

“你需要停止指责我们，

专注于自己”

—they were both people whose lives 

had once been badly fractured 

& who had managed 

to reassemble the parts without 

any manual assistance                        

 

before they were my parents. 

 

This duo whose combined powers were: 

 

his ability to “put a roof over our heads” 

& control small children & animals through fear 

 

& her willingness to caregive for monsters. 

 

It would take me years 

to actually feel as though 

I knew them: 

 

my father in a house of his own making— 

a fragile sprout of a boy, caught in 

the tangled marriage of his parents, 

for whom vicious beatings & police calls 

became family ritual; 

 

my mother in other people’s houses— 

people to whom she was related by blood, 

squatting near a bucket, scrubbing 

the dirt out of their children’s hair.  

 

_____

 

For reference:

 

(I inherited heartbreak from knowing them, 

from collecting pieces of their stories 

that I have indexed here [x] 

 

for the reader’s convenience.)

 

_____

 

The darkest corners smell the most familiar:

 

In some ways, 

who & what my parents were before I was born 

would serve as an indication of my future chances 

& adult outcomes. 

He, a small boy with the observant eyes 

of a pelican, would come into manhood 

under the brutal electric current of 

a broken father, 

growing into a damaged adult who

found it difficult to raise 

three daughters. 

A man in a house full of women, 

all wanting him, needing him, 

too much. 

She, the teenage immigrant who 

arrived to the United States 

fatherless, 

her own leather suitcase smelling like 

beef & rice, 

growing into a woman who could 

never admit 

that a part of her still breathes in deep regret 

for having married a man 

& birthed three daughters 

whose existence tethers her to this thing,

        this jail 

called 

blackness. 

 

_____

 

“I don’t see color”:

我看不到颜色:

 

Blackness would stain 

the most visible parts of her world 

like a birthmark spilled across 

the face of a newborn child. 

And despite my mother’s denial, 

she would resent it 

as though it had 

purposely chosen her, 

sitting atop her immigrant dreams 

& greedily ripping the feathers out of them.  

 

_____

 

Important historical files full of redacted text: 

 

My parents were alive & full of hope 

despite being raised by people 

so fixated on their own pain & survival 

that it was impossible to be 

anything but devastatingly                                 not enough. 不够.

This meant that each of them would 

grow up in their own extensive archive 

of neglect & shame, 

an archive that would, in part, 

be transmitted to each of their three daughters.  

And me being the eldest, I was the one 

who knew and carried                                 the most. 最多.

 

_____

 

Shhhhhhhh. We are reading hiding for our lives:

 

Under that roof, I learned quickly 

that to have a voice 

was to open myself to danger. 

To displease my father,

to craft meaning in my life outside 

of what he defined as meaningful,

was strictly prohibited. 

If I challenged him

& opened myself to his danger, 

I learned that there was no one alive 

who had the power to save me.                        救救我，救救我.

 

To stay alive in that house,                         

I would spend nights dreaming of 

the furthest places on fold-out maps 

in National Geographic magazines. 

        

Tahiti 塔希提岛                Papua New Guinea 巴布亚新几内亚

Chad 乍得

                Nunavut 努纳武特

 

Places that existed 

beyond the borders of 

my father’s domination. 

 

In time, 

each of us would build our own                 small insular worlds                         

where we tried our best to 

protect ourselves 

from 

the violence that 

lived with us at home 

& the violence that 

waited for us outside.  

 

_____

 

This is to say. This is to say:

 

This is to say I inherited so much from my 

family, my history, my city, my country: 

 

love and abuse, 

home and a body, 

dreams and (non-/un-/alter-) citizenship, 

hunger and a need                 for closure.

 

This is to say. 这就是说。

 

 

 

---

Hear Wendy M. Thompson recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast: